VALENTINE SURPRISE CAKE

This cake was made by Nick for our Clandestine Cake Club meeting last February.  The theme was loosely based on St. Valentine’s Day and he simply Googled “Valentine cakes” and this came up first!

Nick being Nick, he followed the recipe, line by line, to the letter and the end result was stunning.  He made an enviably beautiful and glossy ganache to cover it and decorated it with pink roses and little pink hearts that he chose himself.  Bless…….

Essentially the recipe makes two almond sponges, which have a lovely flavour and texture.  One is coloured and flavoured with cocoa powder, then cut into sections with a heart shaped cutter. 

You bury the heart shaped pieces in a log fashion inside the second cake before you bake that and therefore end up with a chocolate heart running through the length of the second cake.  Very effective and remarkably easy to do.

The only slightly disappointing thing was that the hidden heart was not very red in colour even though it contained a whole bottle of red food colouring .  Comments on the website indicated that other people had found this but it’s hardly surprising considering the cake contained so much dark brown cocoa powder to overcome.  The hidden heart in Nick’s cake had a slight hint of red, so that was fine.

You can see the original recipe here.  I am entering this post into this month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, from Choclette over at Tin and Thyme.  You can see the details here.

Ingredients

For each cake (we made the chocolate cake for the centre first and the second cake the next day.)

175g butter, softened.  (we used Flora Buttery)

175g golden caster sugar

3 large eggs

140g self raising flour

½ tsp baking powder

85g ground almonds

100ml milk

1½ tsp vanilla extract

For the chocolate centre

3 tblsp cocoa powder

1 bottle red food colouring

For the icing

100ml double cream

200g dark chocolate, finely chopped

50g unsalted butter

roses, hearts or other decorations of your choice

Method.

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.  Butter a large 900g loaf tin and put a strip of baking paper along the bottom and up the sides.

For the chocolate cake, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder then fold into the mixture along with the ground almonds.  Mix together the milk, vanilla and food colouring and add to the mixture, mix in until evenly combined.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 60-70 minutes until the cake passes the skewer test.   Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

When the cake is cold, cut it into a heart shaped log by using a 5cm (approx) heart shaped cookie or pastry cutter.  To do this, measure the depth of your cutter and slice the cake into thick slices of this depth.  Lay the slices flat on a board and cut out a heart shape from each slice.  

The heart shaped slices will be laid end-to-end inside the second cake and inevitably there will be quite a lot of unused cake.  We used ours to make a chocolate trifle later but you can use your imagination – or just eat the pieces as they are.

Make a second batch of cake mixture exactly like the first except that there will be no cocoa powder or food colouring to include.

Pour two thirds of the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and then carefully lay the heart shaped pieces of chocolate cake, point downwards, side by side in the mixture so as to form a heart shaped log end to end along the length of the tin.  Carefully spoon the remaining mixture around and on top of the hearts and bake for about an hour until the cake is golden brown and passes the skewer test.  Cool as before, then turn out.

To make the icing, put all the ingredients together in a small saucepan and heat gently until combined.  Allow to cool then spread over the cake and add decorations of your choice.

Cuts into 12-16 slices.

BLUEBERRY AND WHITE CHOCOLATE MINI MUFFINS

I am quite a fan of mini muffins.  They are barely more than a single mouthful in size and consequently as a treat they are far less daunting a prospect than regular muffins.  I sometimes find that just one regular muffin is quite filling, and could never eat more than one, whereas mini muffins are so easy to eat that one is never enough – and I don’t feel at all greedy in eating a second or even a third.

I made these soon after our return to France for what was going to be quite a long stay.  I knew I would be leaving our UK kitchen for several weeks so I had a quick look around for anything that would soon need using up and that I could take with me.  Among the various bits and bobs I found a packet of white chocolate chips in the cupboard and half a pack of fresh blueberries in the fridge.

I used my old faithful recipe which I have used before and in no time at all rustled up just one tray of mini muffins.  Most muffins have to be eaten on the same day as baking but these mini versions kept well for three days in a cake tin.  Which means I had three days to eat the lot as Nick is not all that keen on muffins……!!

This month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, organised by Choclette of Tin and Thyme is “anything goes”.

The No Waste Food Challenge is a monthly event of Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary which celebrates the using up of all food rather than throwing it out.

Ingredients

150 g plain flour

50g caster sugar

1 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1 egg, beaten

50g butter, melted and cooled

100 ml milk

75 g blueberries

75 g white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat the oven to 200º C (180º fan) and butter a 24 hole mini muffin tin.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.

Add the butter, egg and milk and mix together quickly.  Add the fruit and chocolate and mix in as briefly as possible, avoiding over-mixing, as long as there are no dry bits of flour.

Divide the mixture between the muffin holes.  (I use a mini ice cream scoop to get the amounts reasonable even.)  Bake for 12 - 15 minutes until risen and golden.

Cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack.

Makes 24.

THE ECONOMICAL £1 CHOCOLATE CAKE

The We Should Cocoa Challenge this month is to bake a chocolate cake for £1.  The idea is to raise awareness of the fact that so many people have very little money available to spend on food and have to survive on £1 or less per day.  You can read all about the challenge and the statistics here.

I priced up my standard recipe for an everyday, all-in-one chocolate cake and it worked out at £1.39 if I used the cheapest own brand ingredients and also omitted the icing.  It then occurred to me that if I only had £1 to spend on a chocolate cake, would I bother to make one or just go out and buy a cheap one?

In both the Co-op and Tesco you can buy a chocolate cake for exactly £1 so I did, just to see what it was like.

It was a pathetic offering and looked pretty small on a tea plate, measuring barely 5” in diameter.  According to the information on the box it would serve six! 

So I decided it was worth a try to see if I could do better for my £1.  I was really aiming to bake a “normal” chocolate sponge, with regular cake ingredients so I used own brand versions of the usual things, the main substitution being Co-op Buttery spread instead of butter.  I then scaled down the ingredients in the recipe by a third.

I don’t have any 6” sandwich tins so I simply baked one 8” cake.  When I took it out of the oven it already looked a lot more inviting than the shop bought cake and I still had enough left from the £1 to put some chocolate butter icing on the top.

The bought cake weighed only 215g and mine weighed 500g, so when cut into six pieces the home made cake definitely won on size as well as appearance.

Of course the taste also had to be taken into consideration so Nick and my dad offered to do an unbiased assessment.  The feeling was that the bought cake tasted slightly more chocolatey but overall the home made cake was best because of its texture, appearance and the size of the slice.

Of course even if the ingredients only cost £1, you still have the cost of baking it in the oven, which I worked out to be 40-50p.  You need a cake tin or mould and, as you can’t buy just 100g of flour or sugar, if you have to invest in full packs of all the ingredients, that would be a total cost of £7.98.

But if I only had £1 and wanted to treat the family to something that looks nice on the table, it would definitely be worth going to the effort of baking, rather than just picking up a cheap version in the supermarket.

Anyway, luckily my economical chocolate cake also fits in with this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, which is to cook something which has the letter “E” in it.  The challenge is run by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The  more than occasional baker and you can see the details here.

Ingredients (prices are given for own brand basic ingredients)

For the cake

100g self raising flour, 4p

100g caster sugar, 14p

100g Co-op Buttery spread, 20p

2 large eggs, 33p (I buy mine from the local farm, six free range for £1)

1tbslp (13g) cocoa powder, 10p

1tsp (5g) baking powder, 1p

Total for the cake 82p

For the icing

20g Co-op Buttery, 4p

40g icing sugar, 8p

½tblsp cocoa powder, 5p

Total for the buttercream icing 17p

Grand total for the whole cake …… 99p

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line the base of a 20cm (8”) round cake tin.

Mix the cocoa powder with 1 tblsp warm water until smooth then put into a large bowl with all the other cake ingredients and beat well until smooth.

Transfer to the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until firm and springy. 

Leave in the tin for a few minutes then turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely before applying the icing.

To make the icing, beat the Buttery and icing sugar together in a small bowl until smooth and creamy. 

Mix the cocoa powder with barely a teaspoon of water until it becomes a smooth paste.  Beat this into the icing and mix well.  Spread on top of the cake.

Cuts into six generous slices !!

CHOCOLATE AND GINGER PUDDLE PUDDING

 

This is a recipe I found in one of the series of little books by the Women’s Institute, called “Chocolate Success”.

It’s for one of those self saucing puddings where you end up with a sponge on top and a sauce underneath.  The interesting thing about this one is that ginger beer is one of the ingredients.

I haven’t bought ginger beer for donkey’s years and it took some finding in our local supermarket.  This was the only brand I could see.

I have made a similar chocolate pudding dozens of times before, using a recipe given to me by a friend decades ago, but this was the first time I had used ginger beer in it.  The mixture was extremely runny, much more so than I remember, and I had serious doubts that it would turn out right.  But it did!

I liked the texture of the sponge and that it was not too sweet, much less sweet than my previously favourite recipe.  There was a hint of ginger from the ginger beer.  I might be tempted to add a little ground ginger to the mixture to make it even more gingery next time.

It’s best to serve the pudding soon after it comes out of the oven.  As time ticks by the sauce thickens and eventually solidifies, in the same way as a custard sets as it cools.

We served ours with some cream but it would be nice with ice cream or even custard.  I have to admit that I also like the pudding cold with the sauce quite set too.  It microwaves well but the sauce doesn’t really become liquid again.

I am submitting this post to the current We Should Cocoa Challenge, the brainchild of Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog and hosted this month by Linzi of Lancashire Food.  You can see the details here.

The theme for January is “new ingredient” and as I have never used ginger beer in anything before, this seems to qualify !!

Ingredients

For the sponge

100g softened butter or margarine (I used Lurpak spreadable)

100g light muscovado sugar

125g self-raising flour

25g cocoa powder

½tsp baking powder

2 eggs

150ml semi-skimmed milk

For the sauce

100g light muscovado sugar

25g cocoa powder

150ml boiling water

300ml ginger beer

Method

Grease a deep pie or casserole dish of about 1.4 litres.  Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°fan / gas mk 4.

Put all the sponge ingredients except for the milk in a food processor and process until smooth.  Gradually add the milk and process to combine.  Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

To make the sauce, put the sugar and cocoa into a medium bowl, add the boiling water and mix until smooth.  Stir in the ginger beer.

Gently pour the sauce over the sponge mixture so that it is completely covered and bake for 40-45 minutes until the sponge is firm.

Serve within ten minutes to ensure the sauce remains runny.

Serves 6.

BLACK FOREST TRIFLE

We had visitors a few days ago and I wanted to make a dessert that would look and taste great without having to spend hours in the kitchen.

I had stumbled upon a recipe for Black Forest Trifle some time ago and decided that now would be a good time to try it.  I adapted it to make my own quick and easy version.  It is loosely based on this one on the Good Food website.

Black Forest means chocolate cake, cherries and cream.  I loved black forest gateau when it was the height of sophistication in the 70’s and 80’s.  During the 90’s it was usurped by the tiramisu, which is also one of my favourite desserts, although that too seems to be disappearing from menus and being replaced by things like salted chocolate tart and anything with pistachios.

This was a doddle to make and in fact I made it the day before it was needed, which is often the best way with something like a trifle.

Our guests loved it.  When I make it again I will either use a smaller trifle bowl or make twice as much.  But even though the quantity didn’t have the wow factor, the flavour most definitely did.

In order to complete the full set of my favourite baking challenges this month I am entering this into this month’s We Should Cocoa challenge, a monthly event to encourage us to bake with chocolate, if any encouragement is actually necessary.  This month the idea is to use alcohol and it’s organised by Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog.  You can read all about it here.

Ingredients

Some chocolate cake, any kind will do, such as muffins, brownies, loaf cake, the amount needed will depend on the size of your trifle bowl

Cherry jam

a tin of dark cherries in syrup or juice, or a jar of cherries in Kirsch, drained.  Reserve the liquid as you will need some of it.

Kirsch or rum to taste

a 500ml tub of ready-made custard

100g good quality dark chocolate

500ml double cream

1tblsp icing sugar

Chocolate sprinkles to decorate

Method

Slice the cake or break it into chunks, enough to make a good thick layer in the bottom of your trifle bowl.  Spread one side of each chunk with cherry jam and arrange the cake the bottom of the bowl.

Pour some Kirsch or rum over the cake to moisten it.  How much to use depends on how boozy you like your trifle but I find that too much can be unpleasantly overpowering.  You can use the liquid from the jar if your cherries are in Kirsch.  Add syrup or juice from the tin to make sure all the cake is moist, but not too soggy.  Put the drained cherries on top.

To make the chocolate custard, break the chocolate into pieces and put it in a small pan with the custard.  Heat gently, stirring all the time, until the chocolate is completely melted.  Allow to cool slightly then pour on top of the cherries.

Chill the trifle while you whip the cream.  Chilling it overnight at this stage improves the texture I think.  Whip the cream with the icing sugar, splodge on top of the trifle and decorate with chocolate sprinkles or other decoration of your choice.  The addition of fresh cherries adds a degree of sophistication.

Serves 6-8.

MILK CHOCOLATE AND TOFFEE CAKE

For this month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge the aim was to bake a chocolate show stopper cake to celebrate three years of the challenge.  So when I was thinking what to bake for my sister in law Kathy’s birthday a chocolate cake with something special about it seemed to be a good idea.

I found this Bundt tin in a local factory shop and was dying for an opportunity to use it.  I had been hankering after a similar design of tin made by Nordic Ware but this one was a fraction of the price at £5.99.  It’s pretty hefty and has a non-stick coating but I greased it and floured it really well and crossed my fingers.

I was lucky – the cake turned out really well and although the definition wasn’t quite as sharp as it might have been with the more expensive tin I was pleased with the result.  (The Nordic Ware tin is still on my Christmas wish list though.)

I wanted to make something a bit different from just a chocolate cake so I used toffee yoghurt, chopped milk chocolate and a chopped Crunchie bar in the cake.  I drizzled a milk chocolate icing over it and decorated it with another chopped Crunchie bar, chocolate sprinkles and edible gold glitter.

I was slightly concerned that the Crunchie pieces in the cake would become hard little nuggets ~ potential tooth breakers ~ once the cake was baked, but they melted away and added to the toffee flavour.  The pieces of chopped chocolate remained whole and made nice little hits of chocolate in every slice.

The milk chocolate and toffee combination worked really well ~ I sometimes find the intense flavour given by dark chocolate a little too strong.

It was a huge cake and would cut easily into at least 16 pieces, ideal for a birthday party or any big crowd.  I used the basic Bundt cake recipe here as a basis for my adaptation. 

So many thanks to Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog for organising this month’s challenge, which is in honour of her partner Chele of Chocolate Teapot who has retired from blogging after three years.  You can see the details here.

Ingredients

225g softened butter

450g caster sugar

4 eggs

350g plain flour

½tsp bicarbonate of soda

½tsp salt

2 tblsp cocoa powder

350g toffee yoghurt (2 pots)

1 Crunchie bar

110g milk chocolate, chopped

For the icing and decoration:

100g milk chocolate

25g unsalted butter

30ml milk

1 Crunchie bar

chocolate sprinkles

edible glitter

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.  Grease and flour a large cake tin or Bundt tin.

In a food mixer (or by hand) beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Mix the flour, bicarb, cocoa powder and salt in a separate bowl.  Chop the chocolate and Crunchie fairly small and drop the pieces into the flour mixture.

Beat the eggs into the mixture one at a time.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and continue by hand.

Sift one third of the flour mixture into the bowl followed by one tub of yoghurt and stir.  Repeat.  Then add the last third of flour including the chocolate pieces.  Stir well to combine.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, making sure to push it into the grooves.  Bake for 60-70 minutes, checking after 60.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.

To make the icing, melt the chocolate and butter in a Pyrex or similar bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Add the milk and beat well.

When the cake is completely cold, spoon the icing over it so that it runs down the sides.  Place a large plate under the cake to collect the drips so that it can be spooned back over the cake.

Decorate with pieces of chopped Crunchie, sprinkles and glitter.

Cuts into a minimum of 16 pieces.

MANGO BLONDIES

When I saw that the We Should Cocoa Challenge for this month, hosted by Shaheen of Allotment 2 Kitchen, was to bake with chocolate and mango, I was sure that I would not be taking part.  I’m not really a mango kind of person.

I do like mangoes, but I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have bought a mango in the last five years, maybe even ten years.  Then I remembered a bag of dried mango lurking in the cupboard, left over from baking a cake using “exotic dried fruits”.  As I was looking at it I remembered baking cranberry blondies a couple of years ago and wondered if I could use the dried mango instead of dried cranberries.  It was worth a try anyway.  Blondies are essentially brownies made with white chocolate instead of dark chocolate.

My original recipe makes a lot of cake so I hunted around and came across this one on the Stork website, which I thought I could adapt quite easily. It makes a smaller cake and is also quick to make.

The recipe states a baking time of 35-45 minutes.  My cake was slightly overdone after 35 and I was a bit annoyed with myself for not checking after 30.  The phone rang and I forgot until the timer beeped.  Still, although it was a bit crozzled at the edges it was still nice.  The cake was moist and crumbly and it was nice to get a bit of chocolate and chewy fruit with every mouthful.

I’m not sure I would rush out and by white chocolate and dried mango to make it again, but it was an easy cake to make and a nice change to have with a cuppa in the afternoon.

So it’s thanks again to Choclette of Chocolate Log blog, and Chele of Chocolate Teapot, for thinking up the We Should Cocoa Challenge in the first place.  Also to Shaheen for being this month’s host.  You can read the details here.

Ingredients

115g Stork block margarine

115g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

125g plain flour

200g white chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chips (I used half of each, as that’s what I had in stock)

115g dried mango pieces

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Grease and line the base of an 18cm square baking tin, or similar.

Put the Stork into a small saucepan and melt over gentle heat.  Remove from the heat and stir in half of the chopped chocolate, reheating as necessary, until the chocolate has melted in and the mixture is nice and smooth.

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar with an electric whisk until thickened and creamy.  Sift over the flour and fold in with the chocolate mixture.

Add half of the remaining chocolate and half of the dried mango.  Stir gently until combined and pour the mixture into the baking tin. 

Scatter the remaining chocolate and mango over the top and bake for 30-35 minutes until nicely golden.  Remove from the oven and cool in the tin.  Cut into squares when cold.

Makes 16 small blondies.

HONEY CHOCOLATE CAKE

This month’s We Should Cocoa challenge, an event organised by Chele of Chocolate Teapot and, this month, Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog, is to bake something with chocolate and honey.  You can see the details here.

A browse through my collection of cook books left me uninspired but I found a recipe for a very simple honey chocolate cake on the internet.  I decided to give it a try even though it was written in cup measurements.

Cup measurements make me uneasy for some reason.  I find I somehow don’t trust myself to measure accurately and always wonder if I’ve got it right.  For example, if the flour or sugar is more firmly packed on one day compared to another the quantity is not going to weigh the same – is it?

I decided to convert the recipe to grams by weighing the ingredients as I measured them out using my cup measures, so that if I want to make the cake again it will be already written in grams, which I am much more comfortable with.  Once I had made the mixture there seemed to be quite a lot of it so I also used a slightly larger tin than suggested.

The cake was easy to make and turned out well - I added a few sprinkles, just for fun.  It was very chocolatey with a slightly chewy, almost brownie-like texture and the icing didn’t really set, staying wickedly sticky.   A nice change from my customary chocolate sponge with a buttercream filling and topping. 

So well done Choclette for leading me to bake a recipe I would otherwise never have found.  It was well worth doing and I am sure I will use the recipe again.

Ingredients

(I give here my conversion into grams but if you want to check you will find the original recipe here.)

125g softened butter

50g soft brown sugar

2 eggs

225g runny honey (I used Sainsbury’s own brand mild honey)

225g self-raising flour

60g cocoa powder

150ml milk

For the icing:

140g icing sugar

60g cocoa powder

75g runny honey

1 tbslp hot water

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter and base line a 23cm square cake tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy, by hand or in an electric mixer.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Add the honey and beat again until well blended.

Sift in the flour and cocoa powder and fold in.  Add the milk and stir in.

Tip into the prepared tin and level the top. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and firm.  Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, sift the sugar and cocoa into a bowl.  Mix the honey and water together then add to the sugar and blend well together.  Add a drop or two more water if necessary to get the right runniness for drizzling.

Cut the cake into squares and drizzle the icing over.  I did this by putting the cooling rack on a baking tray so as not to drizzle all over the worktop.

Add sprinkles, decorations, chocolate raisins, or anything you fancy before serving.

Cuts into 16 generous squares.

CHOCOLATE AND GINGER BUNS

The We Should Cocoa Challenge for this month, hosted by Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes, is to make something combining chocolate with ginger.  This is a combination I have never baked before so I spent a happy time browsing through my cookbooks for ideas.  There were quite a few delicious looking chocolate and ginger cakes, fabulous sophisticated tarts and plenty of ginger biscuits dipped in chocolate.  Then I spotted a half jar of ginger jam in the fridge and wondered if I could do something with that !!  I remembered some little buns I used to make years ago - a kind of rock cake dough but with a blob of jam in the top, dead easy to make and very moreish so I set about finding the recipe.

These days they are sometimes called by a modern name, “thumbprint cookies”, but I remember them as “raspberry buns” because that’s what we always put in them – a blob of raspberry jam. 

But I couldn’t find my recipe anywhere.  I could picture the accompanying photo in my mind – a few buns on a plate – but I searched through my growing collection of cookbooks and found nothing.  In actual fact that’s not absolutely true, I found a couple which used the creaming method to make the dough, which I was sure was wrong as I definitely remember rubbing butter into flour to make them.  A Mary Berry recipe for “mini jammy cakes” came close but they didn’t quite seem how I remembered them. 

I was sure I would find the recipe in the Be-Ro book but it wasn’t there – which is strange because I remember making them with my mum and the Be-Ro book was the only cookbook she ever used, apart from a few handwritten recipes and magazine cuttings that she kept in a folder.  I also seem to remember making them at school, which would be in about 1964 !!

Then I had a eureka moment.  I woke up at 3am the other night and instantly remembered where the recipe was – in the only book I hadn’t checked, my ancient copy of the “Homepride Book of Home Baking”, from about 1970.  And there it was, the very first recipe in the whole book, in the “rubbing in method” section. 

The odd thing is, if my mum used to make them in the 1950’s and 60’s (which I’m sure she did as my dad and I were very fond of anything with jam in it) and the recipe wasn’t in the Be-Ro book, where did she get it from?  Maybe it was in a magazine or a pamphlet, and became one of those things that mums always know how to make without ever having to look at the recipe again, like pastry or Yorkshire pudding.  I suppose it’s possible that she used the recipe that I brought home from school.

 

I adapted the recipe by adding some cocoa powder and using my ginger jam.  The buns were crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside and I loved the craggy look of them – just as I remember how the raspberry buns used to look.  They were not too sweet and could have stood a little more intensity of the chocolate and ginger flavours so next time I think I might add some chocolate chips and glacé ginger to the dough…..I’ll add to the post to say how I got on.

Thanks again to Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes for another inspiring We Should Cocoa Challenge, also to Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog, and Chele of Chocolate Teapot, for having the idea in the first place!!

Ingredients

200g self raising flour

a small pinch of salt

100g cold butter or margarine (I used a block of Clover), cubed

100g caster sugar

1 tblsp cocoa powder

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tblsp milk

ginger jam

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C / 190° fan / gas mk 7.  Grease a large baking sheet or line it with baking parchment

Sift the flour and salt into a large bow and rub in the butter to get fine breadcrumbs.  (Or pulse in a food processor.)

Stir in the cocoa powder and sugar, make a well in the centre and mix in the egg and enough milk to make a firm dough.

Knead lightly on a floured surface and divide the mixture into 12 parts.  Shape each one into a round by hand and place them well apart on the baking sheet.  Using your thumb or the end of a wooden spoon, make a dent in each round and drop in a scant teaspoon of jam.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until risen and brown.  Transfer to a rack to cool.  (Remember not to taste too soon when they come out of the oven as the jam will be very hot and can burn.)

Makes 12 buns.

(For regular raspberry buns, omit the cocoa powder and use raspberry jam.)